Sharing with Kazu

Kazu was such a giving person.

He could share this giving with just his presence.

Its been hard to accept his passing.

I'm only just beginning to.

Because when someone is present in your heart, as a force, a light

a caring that warms you from the inside, it's a life that lives in you

and someone with that power can't die.

Physical pain be gone.

He will have left from his family with grace and they know his love for them like

radiating sunshine wrapped around them

Of course I learned from him in art

about personal, physical, mental, spiritual, inquisitive

commitment. There is no substitute for getting

personally, physically, intimately engaged with your subject. Empathy

is stepping into the emotional shoes of another, whether the piece is about

the age of dinosaurs, or a woman standing on a hill in the sunshine in a soft breeze

in Victorian times (two pieces by Kazu).

When we empathize, we demonstrate a respect for the other person's experience.

We attempt, if not necessarily succeed, to imagine through the power of both our minds

and our bodies, what it is to be another person in a specific moment in time.

Kazu was playful.

When, in directed study, a student would present the topic of their piece, he would ask them

"Tell me, would it interest you to look at "x" aspect of this idea? Yes? Perhaps you could go and do "x action" and think about your idea more deeply from those observations."

You must observe. You must present yourself personally. You must take your idea very seriously and you must try to express that idea with any amount of work necessary.

Step forward to allow this specific project, as a passion, to be fulfilled as a challenge.

Can you express what you've found?

There was no public memorial service for Kazu, and as a graduate of the Academy,

my classmates and I commiserated over this incredible loss by long distance emails - this loss of touch left the sharing of grief and celebration of Kazu unfinished.

I send these thoughts to his family. Kazu was beautiful and he is gone.

If I can offer to others a bit of what being his student gave to me - an intense joy for living and learning from the world around us, and fulfilling an idea through sincere artistry

his legacy may live on a bit through me.

(tribute art piece in progress)